


Survivors

by tielan



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-25
Updated: 2020-10-25
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:05:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,916
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27190130
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tielan/pseuds/tielan
Summary: Sometimes survival is a matter of playing hardball.
Relationships: Raleigh Becket/Mako Mori
Comments: 14
Kudos: 63
Collections: Shipoween 2020 - The Halloween Ship Exchange!





	Survivors

**Author's Note:**

  * For [escritoireazul](https://archiveofourown.org/users/escritoireazul/gifts).



"Next question," says Raleigh, his hand wrapped firmly about Mako's.

\--

The morning after Raleigh first spends the night in Mako's bed, Herc offers them pilot quarters.

Mako would be more suspicious of Raleigh if not for Herc-san's almost embarrassed apology.

" _It's on me. Shoulda done the paperwork before this._ "

Mako has nothing to say to that, so she just scratches Max around the neck. " _You have been busy, Herc-San. As have we all._ "

Max snuffles around her hands and her ankles before planting his butt on the ground and licking her hands as though he's tendering his own apology, but Herc shakes his head, refusing her attempt to defuse his grief and his frustration.

" _You're a pilot now, Miss Mori. That means pilot privileges, and it's important that you get them. Tendo helped me go through the paperwork; as long as we have funding, you'll be paid what you deserve."_

Later, she stands in the quarters that she and Raleigh have been given, overwhelmed by the kindness and the grief and the opportunity all at once.

Across the room, Raleigh is putting up his photos. Not all of them, she notices, but just a handful of him and Yancy in better days - and a few more recent ones, candid snaps taken by Shatterdome staff in the last few days and committed to photopaper.

"I don't have any of Pentecost," he says. "But I thought...we can put your mementos up here." He pats the shelf beneath the photograph wall, ready for the small collection of things she brought with her from Shatterdome to Shatterdome over the years.

They do not remember in the same way, with the same things. His mementos are visual - moments in time, prompts to memory. Hers are tactile - things kept that represent the moment she was in and the feelings that accompanied it. But he has made sure that there is room for her, too - that she will not forget.

They will never forget.

Mako doesn't 't know how to answer him apart from, "Yes." But her hands curl in on themselves, like something she's trying to grip but doesn't know how to hold.

"Hey--" He set the photos down and crosses the room to enfold her hands in his. "What's wrong?"

"Everything," she murmurs, and allows herself the luxury of curling her hands around his. "And nothing."

It's so difficult to explain in English; the grief and joy and guilt she feels for everything that she had, for the good fortune that attended her life - saved from the kaiju, adopted by Pentecost, accepted into the Academy, working with the Jaegers, piloting with Raleigh, surviving Pitfall...

"Mako," he murmurs and draws her into his arms. "I know."

And in his voice, she hears his own echoes - the Academy, Yancy, piloting, fame, Knifehead, survival, and the recall to the PPDC: to purpose, to the Jaeger he loved so much, and to her.

\--

The world wants nothing more than to shower them in gifts and letters and propositions for the future.

Or so it seems to Mako in the immediate weeks after Pitfall.

"I don't remember it being this bad," Raleigh mutters as another box of carefully curated letters is set at the corner of the coffee table.

Mako fingers the thick paper of the letter that a wealthy Japanese businessman has sent to her as Tendo snorts. "Becket-boy, you and Yancy weren't big on the fanmail even at the height of the glory days. You answered a handful of letters, wrote an email or two when you were pushed to it... I think you once even went through an unfiltered inbox of your own accord..."

Raleigh blinks and drops his gaze, like he's just remembered that. His nape tinges red, and Mako suspects that if she stripped him to the skin, his old circuitry scars will burn with bright and tender embarrassment.

When he lifts his eyes to her, she arches a brow, wondering if he will tell her.

 _Not now_ , is the answer she senses from him.

The Drift is still strong - not as clear and sharp as it was in those early days, not without the technological collection - but they are attuned in a way that delights Raleigh and both delights and discomforts her. She is not used to having someone so closely connected with her, so intimately bound. And the intellectual knowledge of what piloting a Jaeger would entail didn't prepare her for the intimacy of her co-pilot in her mind and in her life.

And when her co-pilot is Raleigh Becket...

"You two are doing Drift sex in public," Tendo says without looking up. "Stop it."

"And you have never done a threesome before?" Mako quizzes him. She was brought up in Shatterdomes and has heard all the gossip about Tendo and his exploits.

"Sure, but I'm an old married man, now. And I love you dearly, Mako, but not like that. So stop it."

"What've you got there?" Raleigh points at the letter and Mako has to fight the urge to hide it.

"A letter."

"Fancy one," Tendo notes. "Also: calligraphy. If I recall, that one was hand-delivered by a lackey from Aisutke BioTech who wanted to deliver it directly to Mako and nearly threatened to sue the Jaeger Program when he was told nobody was getting near her who hadn't been cleared past Herc. So is it a marriage proposal or erotic poetry?"

Mako blushes across her cheeks, down her nape, and up to her ears as Tendo crows.

"Really?" Raleigh holds out a hand for the letter. Their fingertips brush as she passes it over to him, and the uncoiling shiver in her belly is as intense as his kisses in bed. "Shouldn't someone have screened this?"

"Well, I'm guessing whoever was on mail duty that day didn't read Japanese and figured nobody could get pornographic in a calligraphic letter."

Raleigh's gaze skims across the calligraphy, and although his _hiragana_ is not good, he has enough of the sense of it from Mako's understanding. This time when his gaze lifts to Mako, the heat in her is in him, too.

They rise without a further word to Tendo who mutters something about the sexual habits of pilots before yelling that they better make sure the door is locked before they do anything.

Mako briefly contemplates pushing him into a side room and making short work of him, but Raleigh inhales sharply. "Bed," he mutters in her ear. " _Our_ bed..."

\--

The first time they appear in public after having sex, heads turn throughout the mess hall, and many a person bites back a grin or a laugh.

Mako cannot understand it. They have been sharing quarters for nearly two weeks, and there were none of the pauses in conversation or the stifled smiles the day after they moved in. If there was any time for raised eyebrows - although these were Shatterdome personnel, well accustomed to the relationships between pilots - then surely it would have been then?

"Oh, please," said Dr. Geizsler. "Like it wasn't immediately obvious when Raleigh swaggered into the hall this morning?"

Dr. Gottlieb huffed in exasperation. "You're being crass, Newt."

"I'm just telling it like it is! And what it was like was a tom who'd been out on the town...except obviously not the town, but...he had a good time. That's all..."

Luckily at that moment, Herc bellows for the two of them, and with his temper sharp and short of late, the Docs G smartly move along, Dr. Gottlieb mouths an apology to Mako.

"I didn't want there to be talk," Raleigh murmurs as they make their way up to the workshop they've been using to make plans for the future. "Not like this."

"There is not," Mako assures him. "But...they have been wondering about us for some time."

"It's not their business..." His body tenses against hers, before he reluctantly relaxes. "Except it is, I guess..."

"It is a Shatterdome. And they consider us _theirs_."

"They consider _you_ theirs." Raleigh wraps an arm around her back and leans back. "I'm still an interloper."

"No! You have been a pilot before..." She leans gently against him. While she is not as tactile as he; she is learning to accept his touch and to give touch in return. How much of it is the mingling of personalities in the Drift and how much of it is simply the relationship between them, she doesn't know.

"Maybe I used to be," he murmurs in her hair. "Now, I'm just a washed-up old pilot that came back and stole one of theirs."

"That is silly." Mako is not a thing that can be stolen, and besides, this is her own choice. Both to pilot with Raleigh and to sleep with him.

"Maybe it's silly," Raleigh concedes. "But it's also true."

\--

Shatterdomes are not the only ones who want to know all the gossip.

Mako has not had to concern herself with the limelight for many years; not since Tokyo. And Raleigh has been out of the news for the better part of five years.

But she knows that it has hit the far reaches of the world when she receives a text from Duke.

_Do I need to give him The Dad Talk? -d_

Mako doesn't answer that question. It is possible that Duke has his informants in the Shatterdomes, but she doubts it. He is like his father; proud to the bone, and nothing will bring him back to the PPDC short of being physically dragged back. Instead, she issues a different invitation entirely. _Where are you? Come for Spring Festival._

She gets no response. She didn't really expect one, any more than she expected Duke to turn up and have that talk with Raleigh.

The interviews are necessary says the Council - the same ones who told _sensei_ that they were defunding the Jaeger program in favour of building the Wall. But first Herc, then Raleigh set limits on who and what and where.

"Not that mob," says Herc, looking over the list. "Nor them. Nor them. Definitely not that lot - dealt with them before and won't ever again. Frankly, there's not a one on this list that I'd trust to get the truth."

That is even before the matter of which questions interviewers are permitted to ask. 

"No," Raleigh says flatly when the PR aide hints delicately around the relationship. "Questions about our personal life are out of line. We're not taking them. We're together, yes, but they're not going to make fodder out of it. They can ask about Pitfall or the trials or what I've been doing these last five years. They don't get to ask about us. If they do, the interview is over."

"I love it when you play hardball, Becket boy," Tendo quips.

Later, though, Raleigh apologises for speaking up. "This is precious," he says when they're curled up together on the lounge in their quarters. "And I've had too many things stolen from me in the name of publicity to let them take this, too."

Mako does not object; she remembers how it was after Tokyo, after Stacker adopted her. It helped that he took Mako to Hawai'i and Tamsin, who suffered no fools - among whom she absolutely counted reporters. 

"They cannot take us," she tells him. "I will not let them."

\--

The interviewer looks at Mako, her face politely expectant that Ms. Mori will answer, even if Mr. Becket will not.

"Next question," Mako says.


End file.
